Albert King - New Orleans Heat

Albert King took his Flying V to the Crescent City for New Orleans Heat, a 1978 album that pairs his stinging blues guitar with the funk-soaked world of Allen Toussaint.

By the late 1970s, King's Stax years were behind him and the blues giant was looking for a fresh setting. Tomato Records found one by teaming him with Toussaint, the songwriter and producer whose touch had shaped decades of New Orleans R&B. The result marries King's huge, bending notes and laid-back vocal swagger to grooves that strut and shuffle with a distinctly Louisiana lilt.

Get Out of My Life, Woman, one of Toussaint's own compositions, gets a sly, slinky reading, while a fresh run at Born Under a Bad Sign gives King's signature song a new coat of paint. We All Wanna Boogie leans happily into the party, and I Get Evil revisits a favorite from his early catalogue with renewed fire. Throughout, King sounds relaxed and in command, trading his trademark licks with a band that clearly knows how to make a groove feel effortless.

It's a lively, good-humored corner of his discography, and proof that the blues and New Orleans funk have always been close cousins. On vinyl, those warm grooves and razor-sharp licks sound right at home.